As a man, I felt like I was a failure. I had devoted myself to the world of cerebral activity. I had learned a practical skill that was elitist,” he says. “Perhaps I should have been learning a skill that the economy supports.

On his meager wages, and meager future prospects with his particular degree. The dedication to his field is somewhat remarkable I suppose. On the whole I’m reminded of the first season of Justified, specifically how the cynical Boyd Crowder would recruit skinheads to rob bank for him, bear all the risk for none of the money. In return the skins would get the satisfaction of doing their part for their glorious race, or as a graduate student would call it, “The life of the mind”. An interesting article RTWT.

The capacity of people to keep digging when in a hole (in this case, to keep on plugging away in their chosen field, disregarding all evidence that it is a bad choice) is remarkable.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macintosh computers.

I read this essay Why Nerds are Unpopular a few days ago and feel the need to share it with everyone. I don’t agree with all of it, Graham is looking deeply into a shallow pool when he examines the American High School Experience but a lot of it rings true to me. School is the only place to be (outside of prison) where attend by law, with no real method of exit. I remember thinking that I hated life in middle and high school, only to find after I left that I just hated being in school, confined with people I didn’t really know for eight hours a day with no option of leaving.

Eric Hoffer has several essays about being useful as the key to self fulfillment. Being in school, you are by definition, not being useful. I’m also reminded of Joel Spolsky’s dictum “Happiness is controlling your environment. If you’re the socially awkward type, (which I was!) then you have no control over the only environment you have any hope of controlling, which is your social environment.

McCain doctrine and Obama doctrine for use of force in humanitarian situations: Obama: There might be moral issues at stake. Surely we should stop Holocaust. Rwanda. Standing idly by diminishes us. Basically, I have no principle. I leave it at the discretion of my evolved moral intuition.

In other words, even if a child’s chance of going to the state university is not increased by his new school, the kid’s chance of ending up in the state penitentiary is radically decreased. This consideration might not be of primary concern to many who support vouchers, but to those who live in the ghetto, it is of PRIMARY concern. Schools, more than anything, breed gangs. Like the projects of old, when you are FORCED to a geographical location, you make gang recruiting easier – and your kids chances of entering the prison system that much greater.

I saw a lecture by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan many years ago and before he veered off into pure math he said that there were three types of social organization, which he dubbed (something like this anyway), the closed circle, the open circle, and the broken circle. The closed circle is a prison, the open is free association, specifically where members have the right to exit and the right to exile rouge members and the broken circle, which is no association at all.

Reading the AJC’s education articles are always a source of malicious fun for me. The articles can be tedious, but the forums are always fun. For some reason people like to pretend that if only we could crack down on some group (the parents, the taxpayer, the students) the problem would solve itself. Grammar and spelling tend to leave quickly as well. This one was my favorite

I’m a career educator with more graduate degrees that the detractors of public education.

Let’s put it in a sports analogy so the neo-luddites can understand, break the legs of the starting offense of the GA Bulldogs and complain about why thy can’t win a championship.

He starts off with a misspelling, and then misuses “Luddite”. Luddite is a proper name, and has no sports meaning.

When one thinks about it, it’s amazing public education works as well as it does. When you have a system where the producer, the consumer and the financier are all different people, why should it work at all?

One other thing that annoys me is the pejorative refrain of “teaching to the test”. Of course, teachers should teach to the test the same way drivers should “drive to the road” and cops should “enforce to the law”. That’s their job after all.

As I’m in rant mode, I suppose I’ll share the other annoying shibboleth of the teaching establishment, which is saying someone is a good student “but doesn’t test well” which is like saying someone is very tall, “but doesn’t measure well”.

Teachers Stage Fake Gun Attack on KidsMURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.

While it’s strange that the priests of the education establishment always maintain that the presence of middle and upper class students helps out lower-class students, what is actually most interesting about this article is that the misspellings of “lose” (as in not win) are equal to it’s correct spellings (3 apiece).